Grace snorted. “I wouldn’t place a wager upon it. The other children have still got theirs, and Flora will beg, borrow, or steal to—” She paused. Read again. “Henry,” she said. “I think I have it.”
Henry jolted, braced his hands upon his knees. “You do? What is it?”
Grace held the letter aloft. “Someone,” she said, “has written a letter to your uncle offering to sell him a passenger manifest for the sum of one thousand pounds.”
∞∞∞
A passenger manifest.
Henry’s heart slammed against the cage of his ribs. “Hell,” he said, his shoulders sinking. He braced his elbows upon his knees and dropped his head into his hands, scraping his fingers through his hair. “I suppose I had thought it would be…I don’t know, a letter from a former servant, or something of that nature. Perhaps a deathbed confession, or a diary, or—” Something less damning. Something lessconcrete. Something which might be explained away as the disgruntlement of a former employee, or else a convenient forgery.
“You said your father was traveling when you were born,”Grace said carefully. “I suppose this alleged manifest will show something damaging?”
“I imagine that it will show,” Henry said slowly, “that my father was still upon a ship bound for England on the date my parents were meant to have been married.” And that it would not, therefore, have been possible for him to have married Mother prior to his birth.Christ.
“Henry,” Grace said softly. “It is going to be all right.”
Henry shook his head, nausea rolling in his stomach. “I had thought it would be something less credible,” he said. “Something that might be explained away somehow. Something which, at worst, would have been grounds for disinheriting me alone.”
“It’s only a passenger manifest,” Grace said, brows drawn. “It’s just—just names upon a list, isn’t it?”
Henry flattened his lips into a grim line. “It’s evidence,” he said. “From a ship’s captain. Someone with no reason to lie, no material benefit to gain, no known vendetta to satisfy. It cannot be dismissed so easily. And furthermore, it’s not only evidence that I was born before my parents’ marriage—it is evidence of irregularitiesinmy parents’ marriage.”
“Oh,” Grace said, her hand flying to her mouth in horror. “You mean to say—”
“If my uncle retrieves it, he has a decent chance of proving that my parents’ marriage ought not to be considered lawful. Mother will no longer be a countess. She’ll lose everything to which she was entitled by marriage, including her widow’s jointure.” Because she would no longer be, strictly speaking, anyone’s widow. “And Eliza—Eliza will be considered illegitimate, as well.” Her life destroyed before it had truly begun. Probably her friends would no longer wish to be associated with her. She would not make her debut in society as the daughter of an earl, but as the bastard of one. Her marriageprospects would be bleak.
All because hehad had the audacity to appear in advance of his parents’ marriage. How many lives had he ruined, in total?
“Henry. Itisgoing to be all right.” Grace’s fingers slid through his hair in a soothing stroke. He hadn’t even realized he’d been bent nearly double, sent reeling by the sheer magnitude of the danger he was in. Those green eyes gazed down into his, and she looked so certain, so encouraging.
He reached for her like a man tossed about in the middle of stormy sea would reach for a lifeline. Something stable and real in a world that had turned itself upon its head. She settled into his arms like a dream, perched across his knees, and turned her face to his.
He believed her. Her nose hadn’t twitched. And still he took a much-needed comfort from the soft lips that bloomed beneath his, the stroke of her fingers through his hair. The sweetly floral scent of jasmine that drifted to his nose. Henry had begun to suspect that he needed her for more than the nimbleness of her fingers, for her experience with the arts of thievery and deception.
He needed the warm weight of her in his arms. The plush softness of her magnificent arse in his lap. The lush sweetness of her lips beneath his. He needed her irreverence, her empathy—perhaps even the deceptive twitch of her nose to keep him on his toes. He needed her to keep him grounded, to hold his face in her hands as she did now, and to soothe his worries away.
“Henry,” she murmured against his lips, and he loved the sound of his name upon them. “We’re in the drawing room. It’s the middle of the day.”
“A moment more.” He bargained with himself more than he bargained with her. Even a kiss was an indiscretion past what could be borne. Though the children had been removed to the park, that still left too damned many people who might stumblein upon them.
He had rigidly adhered to every single one of his principles since he’d been only a boy, and yet—Grace tempted him beyond reason, beyond morals or principles or even good, sound judgment.
She was his Eve. At only the crook of her finger, he would have followed her into Hell itself. Begged upon his knees for just a few more moments of her favor. How had he resisted her so long? It beggared belief.
But she gave him that moment he’d pleaded for, and with a sigh she tucked her head against his shoulder and turned her mouth to his. An eternity would not have been long enough. She tasted like liberally sweetened tea with a bright squeeze of lemon for just a hint of tartness, and the scrape of her fingernails across his scalp made him shiver to the soles of his feet. His hands caught in the laces at her back.
A sharp prick of teeth upon his arm. A warning growl. Henry lifted his head at last.
Tansy stared at him with narrowed eyes, her fangs still firmly caught within the wool of his coat. Her tail flicked back and forth, like the sway of a cobra.
Grace muffled a laugh in her palm. “I suppose she takes her role of chaperone rather seriously,” she said.
“I suppose she must.” His voice had gone hoarse, throaty. Carefully, deliberately, he let his arms fall free from Grace’s waist, allowing her to rise once more. Tansy, mollified, released her jaws and settled back into her spot beside him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me.” Now hewas lying; he knew exactly what had come over him.Shehad, like a damned tidal wave, sweeping him out to sea. But it was the sort of thing one said when one acted in direct conflict with one’s usual behavior.
“I have no complaints,” Grace said briskly as she settled onceagain on the floor near the table. “It’s simply not the sort of thing one wishes to be caught doing, you understand.”
Caught. Yes. He hadn’t even cared about it in the moment. What sort of man was he becoming these days? What sort of man was she changing him into, with every hour he spent in her company? Someone who didn’t care that he might’ve been caught inflagrante delictohere in the damned drawing room, who had learned to palm cards and stack the deck in his favor. Someone whose tightly-held leash upon his behavior had become a little looser, just lately.
